June 26, 2013

The Seven Secrets Of Successful Lazy-Ass Bums

I hate working.

I hate sitting in an office. I hate going to meetings. I hate writing performance reviews. I hate "nurturing" people. I hate listening to bullshit artists and know-nothing loudmouths who dominate our business. Yet somehow I managed to be reasonably successful.

Here are my 7 secrets of success.

1. Assume everyone is faking it. Nobody knows a thing about advertising. All the rules are bullshit. There are a few people who can make good ads. That's all there is.

2. Preparation is everything. If you are not the
best prepared person in every meeting you are just another empty
t-shirt. You will never get your way and you will always be second rate.

3. Do as little work as possible at the office.
Do your real work at home. It's almost impossible to do anything useful
in an office. Offices are for meetings and phone calls and memos and emails and Powerpoints and
politics and bullshit.

4. Worry about everything. If you don't worry you don't care. Figure out what's going to go wrong and be prepared when it does.

5. Stay as far away from big organizations as possible. Corporations will suck all the joy out of your life and all the life out of your joy. Corporations are poison, and the more they pay you the more they own you.

6. Pay no attention to the industry. The more you read about what other agencies or other clients are doing the more you're going to become a cliché spewing zombie. Figure things out for yourself.

7. Be satisfied. You don't have to work for the biggest agency in the world or be the best art director on the planet to be successful and happy. You're not going to be Bill Bernbach anyway, so forget about it. If you're doing work that is respectable, and you're not suffering 90% of the time, you're way ahead of most of the poor bastards in this business. Enjoy it.

When I connect w people I try to be a giver rather than a mere asker/taker - seems the Sisters of St. Joseph did make an impact. Sometimes, many times in fact, it can be difficult to return their favor, so instead I give, well, you and here's the favor I pass along.

"I assume you like to have your marketing-brain challenged and stimulated and you are also short on time --- so, I strongly recommending you read the blog posts by Ad Agency veteran Bob Hoffman --- his fact-based insights on marketing, advertising, consumer behavior and more will open your eyes and might even change the way you think www.AdContrarian.com."

"WARNING: This book will make you laugh out loud."

"The Most provocative Man In Advertising"

"Savage Critiques Of Digital Hype"

"Fabulously Irreverent"

Over 60,000 people have watched Bob's talk at Advertising week, Europe

You Are Caller Number...

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Creative people make the ads. Everyone else makes the arrangements."

"Delusional thinking isn't just acceptable in marketing today -- it's mandatory.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business is about sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."